Botamochi


Botamochi is a Japanese sweet made with glutinous rice, regular rice and sweet azuki paste. They are made by soaking the rice for approximately 1 hour. The rice is then cooked, and a thick azuki paste is hand-packed around pre-formed balls of rice. Botamochi is eaten as sacred food as offering during the weeks of the spring and the autumn Higan in Japan.
A very similar sweet, ohagi, uses a slightly different texture of azuki paste but is otherwise almost identical. It is made in autumn. Some recipe variations in both cases call for a coating of soy flour to be applied to the ohagi after the azuki paste.
text Uji Shūi Monogatari.
The proverb Tana kara botamochi, literally "a botamochi falls down from a shelf", means "receiving a windfall", "a lucky break".
The term is also used for a specific pattern of Bizen ware with two, three or five round marks, as if the marks of the small balls of rice cakes were left on the plate.

History

The prototype of Ohagi was made from cooked glutinous rice and red beans. However, since the Meiji era, sugar has become accessible to the common people, and sweeter rice cakes are gradually being made. In addition, since it was believed that red beans had an effect of dispelling evil, it was first served when the ancestors served as disgusting food. For this reason, it is considered that the custom of eating at the bank and the forty-nine days is now established.